Lawsuits against universities have led the way in the legal war on anti-Semitism since October 7, but the private sector was sure to follow with a high-profile suit of its own. It has done so now in a complaint against Intel, and the Anti-Defamation League’s decision to join the suit will ensure it remains in the headlines.
The story behind the suit is as follows. Some time before October 7 of last year, an Israeli man moved from Tel Aviv to New York when Intel purchased the company he worked for. After the attacks, the man claims, two Intel executives began making public anti-Semitic and pro-Hamas social-media posts. One of those executives was then made the employee’s supervisor. When the employee complained—the Israeli man, a veteran of the IDF, is trying to remain anonymous, so it is (for now) a John Doe suit—the company retaliated against him, according to the suit, firing him. Doe was the only one fired from this supervisor’s section and the only Israeli in it.
Doe says Intel then supported the two executives and refused to work with him on a compromise.
Intel’s large presence in Israel and the ADL’s involvement are important details here. According to CNBC, “It is the first time the ADL has sued a major American company in its over 100-year history.”
What was the content of the offending posts that started this battle? ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt appeared on CNBC yesterday and described them as “social-media posts displaying Israeli soldiers being bombed, being burned. Images of Israeli soldiers where Palestinians had the feet on the neck—ugly, hideous, grotesque stuff.”
The supervisor also, apparently, continued making comments about Doe’s national origin before Doe was pushed out. “We’re living in this wonderland now where it seems to be open season on Jews,” Greenblatt said on CNBC. “Somehow, some way, people think it’s just political speech if you target and harass people because of their Jewish identity or faith.”
Doe also says Intel filed a motion to “out” him, which he finds gratuitously retaliatory in itself. The company’s motion claims that Doe ought to go by his real name in the suit since he has publicly named the executives at Intel (Doe responds by noting that those officials’ social-media postings were public and under their own names), and that there’s no real threat to Doe’s safety by having his identity publicly revealed.
The most telling part is Intel’s response, as reported by CNBC: “An Intel spokeswoman said the company has a longstanding culture of diversity and inclusion and does not tolerate hate speech of any kind, pointing to its code of conduct.”
We have a handbook! What more do you want from us?
Meanwhile, the “longstanding culture of diversity and inclusion” is the problem here, not the solution. DEI and the culture it produces are precisely what we’re seeing on a mass scale at universities across the country, where Jewish students’ civil rights are openly violated and “diversity and inclusion” bureaucracies are designed to exclude Jews. HR and PR professionals are flummoxed by all this—they were told that if the companies incorporated DEI into their mission, they would be seen as properly antiracist. Where is all this discrimination coming from?
Doe will have his day in court, but hopefully major private sector companies and groups like the ADL will be able to admit and confront the harm baked into any institution that adopts DEI. Sometimes the solution is sitting out in the open the whole time. It might even be in the handbook.
